


Every Day (Is Exactly the Same)

by Cardinal_Perplexus



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Implied One-Sided Relationships, Implied Relationships, Inspired by Music, Lonely!Martin, Slice of Life, implied depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cardinal_Perplexus/pseuds/Cardinal_Perplexus
Summary: Martin still works at the Magnus Institute. He just has a new routine.





	Every Day (Is Exactly the Same)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few weeks ago, and after episode 150, I thought now would be a good time to post it. It was inspired by “Every Day Is Exactly The Same” by Nine Inch Nails, off of their 2005 album, _With Teeth_.  
Thematically speaking, _With Teeth_ works a lot with feelings of isolation and questioning the reality of your existence, so it’s actually a really Lonely album. Listening to it, I’ve been getting a ton of Lonely!Martin vibes, which inspired this fic.  
Hopefully it works.  
Links in the end notes, I highly recommend giving “Every Day” a listen, if not all of _With Teeth_.
> 
> Shoutout to Ty for the original beta read a few weeks ago. I've edited it a bit since, so any mistakes are mine. Give me a heads up and I'll correct them.

Martin Blackwood wakes up at 6:02 am. He spends the three minutes before his alarm goes off staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’s actually awake or if he’s somehow opened his eyes in his sleep. He reaches out and, with a practiced motion, turns off his alarm. Sometimes, he just lets it ring for the five extra minutes he spends in bed, still staring up at his ceiling, slowly becoming more aware of himself as he wakes up.

It’s cold. Or maybe it isn’t. He’s never sure anymore. Maybe it’s just that he feels so numb that everything feels cold.

Once, he loved his flat. He loved his room and his bed and the absurdly expensive sheets he bought once, the ones that only got softer every time he put them in the wash. He loved waking up in the mornings. He loved rolling out of bed to take a shower before he made himself tea and eggs sunny-side-down, just so he could make a mess of the yolks on his plate and soak them up with his toast. He loved to eat his breakfast in the armchair next to the window, where he could watch the early morning pedestrians and the birds and listen to the radio.

Now, he just lies in bed and stares at his ceiling. It’s a mediocre flat, just like any other. It takes him an almost unreasonable amount of time to force himself out of bed and into a pathetic excuse of a shower. He steams up the bathroom, scalds himself red with the heat of it, just standing under the burning spray, but it does nothing to warm him.

His favorite color used to be green. Any shade of green, really. Anything that reminded him of growing things and, ever since he’d moved to London, the resilient strength and stubbornness of blooming flowers and weeds that pushed through the cracks in the pavement to worship the sun.

He doesn’t remember when he stopped wearing green. He doesn’t remember when his towels, the deep blue ones he’d picked to match the rest of his bathroom décor, turned grey.

Sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his tea and eating plain, dry toast, he realizes his flat seems dimmer than it should, like what little light that managed to filter in through the windows has faded somehow. He knows this should bother him. But it doesn’t. And the fact that he can’t quite taste his favorite tea doesn’t bother him, either. It’s all just normal, at this point.

Martin still takes the tube in to work. On some level, he expects people to start walking into him. But they don’t. They just pay him even less attention than before. On some level, he thinks this should bother him, but why would it? Something in the back of his mind is keen to tell him that people don’t actually notice him now. They simply don’t realize he’s there. And if people don’t notice him now, that means every time someone bumped into him before, it was probably on purpose.

He doesn’t like that thought. He just adjusts his headphones and tries not to think about it.

Walking into the Institute, no one notices him. The archival department may be used to dealing with fear gods and eldritch horrors, but the rest of the staff are off in their own little worlds. The archive was already considered its own creepy basement dimension during Gertrude’s tenure, but from the snippets he can hear around various break rooms, most of the Institute seem to believe Jon leads a rag-tag team of crazies, in spite of their apparent knack for getting things done.

Martin isn’t sure if he agrees or not. But no one would hear him if he tried to join those conversations, anyway. Or, if they did, he’d startle them so badly they’d all leave. Like last time.

Working for Peter Lukas is actually quite simple. Moving from the archives and into administration was a bit of a jump, but once he got the hang of it, spreadsheets, accounting, and minor HR isn’t actually that hard. It’s just how he operates. Once he knows what he’s doing, he really doesn’t need much support or supervision. So long as he knows what he has to get done that day, finish that week, and prepare for Lukas to sign and when, he’s alright.

He doesn’t have to talk to anyone, really.

And his new office isn’t in the basement. It’s just near it. So he doesn’t really have much of a reason to be in or around the archives.

He doesn’t have a reason to talk to Jon. Or Basira. Or Melanie. Or Daisy, either. He doesn’t have a reason to wander by their offices to check in, just to see how they’re doing. To see if they can still see him, when everyone else looks past him.

Somehow, that hurts the most. More than silent work days and lunches alone. More than feeling crowds part so he can walk through, unnoticed and unimpeded. Just the pain of not knowing, not knowing and having no real way to check if his coworkers, if his _friends_ still know he exists during all the little moments when he isn’t so important as to have enough of a presence for people to properly notice, to realize he’s also alive and real, cuts him to the core.

It’s the only thing he can feel beyond blank numbness, it seems.

It would take so little effort on his part, to just stop typing, to stand up and leave his office, to walk downstairs and into the cool, dark basement, to walk through the stacks and stop in front of the small army of assistant desks, in front of Jon’s office and just_ stand_ there, waiting to see who will hear him. To see who manages to look up. Just to see how far gone he is, to see if he can still be pulled back from the edge of this cold, lonely precipice.

They should be able to see him, he thinks. Working in the archives, actually dealing with the Beholding and all the things it can see, all the things that happen in the dark and the shadows, if anyone would be able to see him, actually look him dead in the eye and_ see_ him, it would be the archive crew.

Jon would be able to see him, at least. Jon had changed since the Unknowing. And even though the thought of it made him feel like he’d swallowed a lead weight, Martin knew, he _knew_ Jon would be able to see him. He’d see him and speak to him and ask why he’d been missing, and even though he wouldn’t be able to answer, the idea of just hearing his voice, of just being _seen_ and _spoken to_ made him feel like crying.

But he has reports to write. And accounting to do. And letters and emails to draft. So he just holds his breath and keeps typing. And working through his breaks. And his lunches. And, at 4:50, he saves his work and starts to pack up so he can leave at 5:00 on the dot.

His commute home is much like his commute in, except with a stop to pick up something for dinner.

He used to cook. He used to love cooking, really. When he had the time, he liked to bake and bring new recipes in to the archive break room for everyone to snack on. Cooking and baking let him be creative and gave him a sense of purpose. He loved trying new things and sharing them with his friends.

Now, everything tastes like sand. Even his favorite curry, the one hot enough to make his eyes water, the one from the place just a few blocks from his flat, tastes as bland and as lifeless as he feels. He still forces himself to eat half of it before he puts the other half in the fridge. Maybe he’ll eat the rest of it tomorrow night. If he remembers.

Martin used to write. He can’t, anymore. He’s already given up trying. But he still takes a pencil and his notebook with him when he sits down to watch telly until it’s a reasonable hour to go to sleep. He doesn’t even know what he’s watching. Some part of him thinks that he’d have a better time staring at a blank wall.

Perhaps, if he could gather enough of himself to feel something beyond this kind of empty numbness, he would chuck his flatscreen out of his living room window. Though, whether it would be out of frustration or just for something to do, he doesn’t know.

At 9:00, Martin spends five minutes brushing his teeth. It should only take him two minutes to scrub the fronts, the backs, the tops, the sides, and his tongue, but he can’t help staring at his reflection. The cool mint of his toothpaste heats in his mouth, producing a disgustingly tepid foam that spills from his lips as he brushes.

The edges of his reflection seem blurry. Everywhere he looks, every little line and division that differentiates _him_ from _everything else_ comes into stark focus, while everything else grows more fuzzy, as if clinging to his own shape in the mirror is making himself fade faster. The more he thinks about it, the more he tries to figure out where he ends and the rest of everything begins, the harder it gets.

Martin sits on his bed two minutes later. Across the room is his bookshelf. On it is a book he remembers reading once, ages ago, about a woman who fell into a fantasy world, who felt like she wasn’t real. Like she was always fading. In the book, she used mirrors to make herself Real. A man had appeared, but he didn’t save her. She saved herself. He should read it again, he thinks.

Instead, he lies down and stares at the ceiling. He hasn’t spoken to anyone today. He doesn’t remember the last time someone else spoke to him. He doesn’t remember the last time someone noticed him. He doesn’t remember the last time someone realized he was there.

He doesn’t remember the last time he smiled.

Martin Blackwood closes his eyes and, trying not to shiver beneath his covers, tries to go to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> [Every Day Is Exactly the Same](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqblYbUAeI)
> 
> [With Teeth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhJ7YdojdU&list=PLfUV806q_Ri51F8e8ENdYXHwGE2vVg_ZR)


End file.
